Beetroot Juice Can Prolong Your Workouts

Is This The Latest Weapon Against Workout Fatigue?

Why Is This Important

Because it looks like we have another weapon to aid in the battle against workout fatigue.

Long Story Short

A new study illustrates that male subjects who drank beet juice for 15 days had lower blood pressure and more dilated blood vessels at rest and during exercise, suggesting it can be used as a dietary nutraceutical supplement to enhance oxygen delivery to the muscles, reduce the work the heart does, and prolong a given workload during exercise before the onset of fatigue.

Long Story

In a new study from the American Journal of Physiology–Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology, men who consumed beet juice for two weeks had lower blood pressure and more dilated blood vessels both at rest and during exercise. What’s more, their blood vessels dilated more easily and the heart consumed less oxygen during exercise.

The findings suggest that beet juice can be used as a dietary supplement to enhance cardio performance and reduce the strain on the heart during exercise. Which means? Exercise can be maintained at a given workload for a longer period of time before the onset of fatigue.

The blood pressure thing isn’t entirely new — beetroot juice is packed with antioxidants and anti-inflammatory properties — and a 2010 study indicated that the purple stuff could help halt the onset of dementia, due to its capacity to help deliver more blood to our all important white matter. But the link to increased performance during exercise hadn’t specifically been illustrated.

For the study, researchers recruited fourteen healthy adult males and asked them to adhere to a strict supplementation of either nitrate-rich beetroot juice or nitrate-depleted beetroot juice. The research team then collected blood pressure readings and logged each participant’s number of dilated blood vessels.

The gents who drank nitrate-rich beetroot juice had lower blood pressure and more dilated blood vessels both at rest and during exercise, the researchers adding that exercise can be “performed at a given workload for a longer period of time before the onset of fatigue.”

Own The Conversation

Ask The Big Question

This nitrate thing seems a doozy. Where else can I find it?

Disrupt Your Feed

Just make sure its fresh beetroot — not the tinned stuff Australians lose their sh*t over.

Drop This Fact

According to the American Society for Nutrition, around 80 percent of dietary nitrates are found in vegetables. Two beetroots contain around 0.2 grams of dietary nitrate, the equivalent to a large bowl of lettuce.